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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Nature's Fury

We headed to Central Park this morning to see for ourselves the destruction we've heard about from Tuesday night's storm and to see how the clean-up is getting along.

To help understand the scope of the damage - here are images of 2 trees - right next to each other. It helps you imagine the "before" look - and the "after" look.

Untouched - and beautiful

Not so lucky -

I imagine they trimmed the damaged branches to eliminate an immediate hazard - and that the rest of the tree will follow soon.

Huge trees just blown over - this one completely uprooted.

And this one just bent in half.

It seemed everywhere I looked in this area (west side - near the tennis courts and 96th Street) I found caution tape, damaged trees...

And fresh, steaming piles of wood chips.

The power of nature amazes me. The beauty of a sunset, of snow capped mountains, luscious green valleys, and majestic coastlines (Hmm...I must have Maine on my mind! ). And then you see how destructive and dangerous nature can be.

The park will recover. The storm damage is centered in the northwest section. It took us a while to get there. As we first entered the park we were thinking, "hm - not so bad" then after brunch we headed further north - and it was indeed devastating. You can follow the progress of the recovery by checking the Central Park Conservatory website

On a happier note - although my dear Due slept in AGAIN today, we met a great pup at brunch. This is Maddie - and Maddie is a pit bull mix rescue dog. It started to rain during brunch so Maddie and her folks, and Mom & me - huddled under one big umbrella in order to stay dry. The important thing of course is that the BACON stayed dry!

What a face!

Mom's working on some new designs, and I'm doing a stellar jump supervising the entire operation. I'll try to post some photos of our "studio" soon. Until then...